nd the seasons of the year, and takes part in, and is intimate
with, everything which is evolved by creation. For let us look at the
round of the year's labours. Even before spring has arrived there will
have begun a general watching and a waiting for it, and a preparing for
sowing, and an apportioning of crops, and a measuring of seed grain by
byres, and drying of seed, and a dividing of the workers into teams.
For everything needs to be examined beforehand, and calculations must be
made at the very start. And as soon as ever the ice shall have melted,
and the rivers be flowing, and the land have dried sufficiently to be
workable, the spade will begin its task in kitchen and flower garden,
and the plough and the harrow their tasks in the field; until everywhere
there will be tilling and sowing and planting. And do you understand
what the sum of that labour will mean? It will mean that the harvest is
being sown, that the welfare of the world is being sown, that the
food of millions is being put into the earth. And thereafter will come
summer, the season of reaping, endless reaping; for suddenly the crops
will have ripened, and rye-sheaf will be lying heaped upon rye-sheaf,
with, elsewhere, stocks of barley, and of oats, and of wheat. And
everything will be teeming with life, and not a moment will there need
to be lost, seeing that, had you even twenty eyes, you would have need
for them all. And after the harvest festivities there will be grain to
be carted to byre or stacked in ricks, and stores to be prepared for the
winter, and storehouses and kilns and cattle-sheds to be cleaned for the
same purpose, and the women to be assigned their tasks, and the totals
of everything to be calculated, so that one may see the value of
what has been done. And lastly will come winter, when in every
threshing-floor the flail will be working, and the grain, when threshed,
will need to be carried from barn to binn, and the mills require to be
seen to, and the estate factories to be inspected, and the workmen's
huts to be visited for the purpose of ascertaining how the muzhik is
faring (for, given a carpenter who is clever with his tools, I, for one,
am only too glad to spend an hour or two in his company, so cheering
to me is labour). And if, in addition, one discerns the end to which
everything is moving, and the manner in which the things of earth are
everywhere multiplying and multiplying, and bringing forth more and more
fruit to one'